Songfacts®:

• Paris Paloma is a singer-songwriter from Surrey, England. She started releasing songs towards the end of 2020 when she dropped her debut single, "Narcissus."
  
  "Labour" slams the patriarchy's impact on women at home. Paloma sings about how being with a man can make women feel like they must take on all these different roles. It's like they have to be a therapist, a mother, a maid, and even a mythical nymph or virgin.
• Just an appendage, live to attend him
  So that he never lifts a finger
  Twenty-four-seven baby machine
  So he can live out his picket fence dreams
  
  Women end up feeling like just an accessory to their man, always at his beck and call, never able to rest. "Women are just doing more and more, and men are not doing any more than they've ever done," Paloma told The Big Issue. "There's still expectation for women to have this very traditional archaic role as a caregiver and a servant and a wife and a mother and a homemaker, but women have had enough of existing to serve other people."
• The song title works on a couple of levels. It's about the hard work women have always done to keep their marriages going strong, even though people used to think they didn't work at all. But let's be real, women have always worked in some way, whether it was helping in the fields or doing specialized work.
  
  And the title "Labour" also talks about how society undervalues the work of giving birth and raising kids.
• Justin Glasco's production incorporates a folky beat that just gets your foot tapping. And on top of that, he's added some haunting chanting that almost sounds like it could be from some pagan ritual. Glasco also produced Paloma's "Notre Dame" single.
• Paloma's teaser of "Labour" on TikTok struck a chord with many young women who are tired of dealing with sexism. A clip from the music video where Paloma eats bloody-looking fruits (which are actually beets and pomegranates, but they could easily be mistaken for a heart), got over a million likes.
• Women started to use the song for videos where they express their own experiences with misogyny and anger. There was huge anticipation for the song's release, and the week after Paloma dropped it on March 23, 2023, it debuted at #29 in the UK singles chart.
• Twenty-four seven, baby machine
  So he can live out his picket fence dreams
  It's not an act of love if you make her
  You make me do too much labor
  
  It was during the last day of a weeklong studio session in Los Angeles with Justin Glasco when Paris Paloma knew she had a hit song on her hands. She was preparing to record the climactic bridge to "Labour," with fellow female backup singers Natalie Duque, Nolyn Ducich, and Annabel Lee.
  
  "We were all just screaming our hearts out in a room," Paloma recalled to Billboard. "And it was like, 'This is it. This is what the song is about.'"